Beethoven was a reluctant song composer, avowedly frustrated by the limitations of the human voice – and, one suspects, the genre’s limited scope for motivic-symphonic development. Yet he still left over 80 songs, ranging from agreeable trifles and Italianate scenas to the gravely majestic Gellert Lieder – described by Susan Youens, in a superb note, as “miniature sermon-songs” – and the song-cycle An die ferne Geliebte. Mirroring Beethoven’s life, the distant, unattainable beloved is a recurrent obsession here, whether in three settings of “An die Geliebte” or four of Mignon’s yearning “Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt”, the last surely in Schubert’s mind when he composed his famous setting of 1826. Elsewhere we have ingenuous quasi folksongs, the sombre “In questa tomba oscura”, and a clutch of comic songs, by turns lusty, viciously satirical (Mephistopheles’s “Song of the Flea” from Faust) or coyly erotic (“Der Kuss”).

Two thirds of the numbers on this pair of CDs go to Roderick Williams, whose clean, mellifluous timbre, firm legato and expressive diction are well nigh ideal. The Gellert Lieder can be a bit of a bore when performed as lofty hymns. Like the comparably fresh-voiced Stephan Genz (Hyperion, 5/99), Williams sings them as personal dramas of the soul. If Genz is the more overtly anguished penitent at the opening of “Busslied”, Williams’s slightly more contained style is no less moving. At the other end of the spectrum he sings a slyly lubricious “Der Kuss”, colouring and timing to perfection, characterises the “Song of the Flea” with gusto, and even brings off the potentially tedious “Urians Reise um die Welt”, a 14-verse travelogue related by a blinkered bore.

My enjoyment of Ann Murray’s contributions was more mixed. She is, as ever, a thoughtful interpreter; and when she sings softly – as in her touching performances of the “Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt” settings or “An den fernen Geliebten” – she gives pleasure. At mezzo forte and above her tone tends to grow squally – marring, say, her deeply felt “Kennst du das Land” and “Liebes-klage”. This proviso aside, these discs offer many unsuspected delights, enhanced throughout by Iain Burnside’s vividly imagined and, where appropriate, witty keyboard commentaries and epilogues.